Travel as a Teacher

It is definitely not easy to manage a family of five when jet setting around the world. It’s amazing my parents never went insane wrangling a three year old, six year old and nine year old around Gatwick Airport and the parking at gatwick when I was a child. Traveling around the globe at a young age did a lot to open my eyes to the possibilities in life.

The first lesson that our family learned is that even the best laid plans can go horribly wrong. It is a great lesson in learning to be adaptable. There are times when flights are missed, trains are delayed or vehicles just won’t start. It isn’t the end of the world, and sometimes the adventure you stumble upon is ten times greater and much more fun than the adventure that was planned.

The second lesson that I learned in particular was the differences in people aren’t a bad or scary thing. It involved meeting a very, very tall man in manchester airport parking lot. It is burned in my memory as a four year old standing next to a man who looked taller than the giant tree that resided in our back yard. He was a very friendly man however, and it taught me that differences make us special.

Another lesson that we learned while touring Europe was that sometimes getting lost is scary and staying together as a family is incredibly important. My brother got lost at stansted airport parking once and my parents spent a good hour scouring the parking lot to find him. They eventually found him, he had fallen asleep in the very back row of the bus underneath the seat. It says something to the resilience of children that he doesn’t even remembering being lost, he just remembers being found.

Lessons aren’t always learned in a class room, in fact, some of the most important lessons are learned outside. The biggest lesson that we, as kids, learned while traveling with my parents was that life is filled with new things to learn and places to explore. There’s an excitement that you find when traveling overseas that stays with you for the rest of your life. The only danger is that it can lead to a sense of wander lust that leaves you longing to travel always.